![]() Consequently, one can read Chaucer’s long vowels with the same values as in Latin or any continental European language and come pretty close to the Middle English values. It had much the same value as written long e has in most modern European languages. For example, Middle English “long e” in Chaucer’s “sheep” had the value of Latin “e” (and sounded like Modern English “shape” in the International Phonetic Alphabet ). Old and Middle English were written in the Latin alphabet and the vowels were represented by the letters assigned to the sounds in Latin. ![]() This is due to what is called The Great Vowel Shift.īeginning in the twelfth century and continuing until the eighteenth century (but with its main effects in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries) the sounds of the long stressed vowels in English changed their places of articulation (i.e., how the sounds are made). But the “long” vowels are regularly and strikingly different. And the short vowels are very similar in Middle and Modern English. The consonants remain generally the same, though Chaucer rolled his r’s, sometimes dropped his aitches, and pronounced both elements of consonant combinations, such as “kn,” that were later simplified. The main difference between Chaucer’s language and our own is in the pronunciation of the “long” vowels. This page gives just a quick overview our interactive See and Hear page adds sound and animation to give you a better sense of how this all works. Any standard history of the English language textbook (see our sources) will have a discussion of the GVS. The Great Vowel Shift has had long-term implications for, among other things, orthography, the teaching of reading, and the understanding of any English-language text written before or during the Shift. Otto Jespersenīasically, the long vowels shifted upwards that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth. ![]() The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term. Some consonant sounds changed as well, particularly those that became silent the term Great Vowel Shift is sometimes used to include these consonant changes.Įnglish spelling started being standardized in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Great Vowel Shift is the major reason English spellings now often deviate considerably from how they represent pronunciations. Through this vowel shift, the pronunciation of all Middle English long vowels was changed. The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language that took place primarily between 14, beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English.
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